33 posts · 9 participants · started Jul 26, 2014, 2:59 AM
TUB says that we need to learn how to distinguish between what has value and what is value.
I have my ideas about this but would like to hear what you think about this.
What is something that is value – must be a person eh? Or how about the gospel of Jesus, or our Adjuster, or the Spirit of Truth, or our evolving soul?
Things as well as persons can have value but how do you describe what is value.
Great question nelsong,
That quote makes you think about it!
So, doesn’t it boil down to this?: A house has value, but love is value.
Truth, Beauty and Goodness are divine values. The Supreme is being built out of our accumulated values. The currency of the spirit world is values: loyalty, integrity, compassion.
What is of true and lasting value is a wide theme in the UB. Think of Jesus and his “no moth can destroy” metaphor.
Knowing the difference between material values and spirit value is basic cosmic citizen training, or should/will be.
But don’t most people know the difference, in a measure, or at least come to realize it before succumbing?
Richard E Warren
I think you have to look at that quote in context. The subject of the quote is the relationship between meaning and value as it pertains to spiritual growth. Value without meaning is value that has not found expression in experience. That which has value is only potential until made meaningful by experience, then it is value. Spiritual growth involves the progressive realization of the interrelation between value and meaning.
Knowing the difference between material values and spirit value is basic cosmic citizen training, or should/will be.
Interesting point. Do you mean like this:
My material house HAS value. It is worth more than what I paid for it; it shelters me; it provides a locus for community membership; it is a source of pleasure and provides work. My material house, which HAS value, is also a home which IS value. My home is more than a material place; it is a place used to fellowship with family and friends, to develop relationships, and personality relationships IS value.
How about this: Humanity has value; each person is valuable to God.
Interesting question posted and even more interesting are the responses!
How about this: Humanity has value; each person is valuable to God.
Yeah. I like that. Personalities are always value.
I’m glad nelsong started this topic. That statement in the UB about “has” and “is” value has always bugged me a bit!! The responses here are valuable!!
Peace to all.
MK
Does anyone want to discuss this relevant quote?
100:3.5 Values can never be static; reality signifies change, growth. Change without growth, expansion of meaning and exaltation of value, is valueless — is potential evil. The greater the quality of cosmic adaptation, the more of meaning any experience possesses. Values are not conceptual illusions; they are real, but always they depend on the fact of relationships. Values are always both actual and potential — not what was, but what is and is to be.
TUB also talks about moral values. :)
I have been reading Paper 100 lately and re-reading several of its portions and rediscovered high value again! This current topic is more fully understand by an intense perusal of the entire Paper 100. One of the 2014 Study Group Symposium speakers, I believe Jeff Wattles, said a strategy for group study is vital. Those vital features are: questioning, sharing, moving from concepts to experience (new understanding) and cross referencing.
My understanding is sharing through cross referencing teachings from TUB are vital to achieving new clarity of teachings from this powerful new Revelation. If we are serious at studying the book for new understanding, then we should include the four study vitals listed above. Thanks, indeed, to the SG symposium for very good instruction.
Expect more from the next Urantia Association international conference in Quebec Province at Sherbrooke next July. Lets have a forum “on site”!!
So, yes, Bonita. Let one and all share to learn what is potential in each of us!!!!!
Mark K.
Does anyone want to discuss this relevant quote?
100:3.5 Values can never be static; reality signifies change, growth. Change without growth, expansion of meaning and exaltation of value, is valueless — is potential evil. The greater the quality of cosmic adaptation, the more of meaning any experience possesses. Values are not conceptual illusions; they are real, but always they depend on the fact of relationships. Values are always both actual and potential — not what was, but what is and is to be.
Seems we need to define “is” once again only this time lets pick up a dictionary, not a red dress.
From the Oxford dictionary of philosophy
It is common to distinguish the “is” of identity (Mount Everest is Chomolungma): the “is” of predication (Jones is a bore): and the “is” of existence (there is a life after death). In the treatment of propositions of this complexity in the Predicate Calculus there is no symbolism common to these three, and the theory of why a natural language such as English finds a common element is not at all certain. It seems quite possible to present the same information without any such common element: Jones bores: life after death exists.
So where did the revealators go for their definition? Can the term “value” by itself describe something that “is” value? It fits better when describing a universe full of persons that have values or things that have value.
Seems to me that if values are growing then there could be only one answer for what it is that “is” value because something the “is” value is not growing – like the Father maybe? Everything that has value is relative to the Father.
The Father “is” value. Trying to say this about anything else just does not quit get there.
While Im at it Ill put in what Oxford says about predicate calculus: The logical calculus in which the expressions include predicate letters, variables, and quantifiers, names, and operation letters, as well as the expressions for truth functions and the propositional variables of the propositional calculus, The predicate calculus is the heart of modern logic, having proved capable of formalizing the central reasoning processes of modern mathematics and science. In a first-order predicate calculus the variables range ofer objects; in a higher-order calculus they may range over predicates and functions themselves. the first-order predicate calculus with identity includes “=” as a primitive (undefined) expression: in a higher-order calculus it may be defined by the law that x=y iff (vf) (Fx<>Fy).
So what “is”?
Why wouldn’t the is value be growing? Wouldn’t something that is begin as existential (existing) and become experiential – given life. Something that has value would only be an idea, existing but not having meaning in experience. Although, it is possible to flip the whole thing around if you use the word has to mean ownership, where ownership constitutes meaning and is constitutes only potential meaning, i.e. value. No matter how you look at it, one of these words symbolizes value the other symbolizes meaning. Whether meaning comes when one has something and uses it in life, or when one makes it real and it is something useable in life, is entirely a matter of interpretation. I can see it both ways.
nelsong asks about the distinction between that which has value and that which is value.
I think the author is simply bringing our attention to the age-old distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic value.
Anything which is loved in and for itself is value. Rick nailed the spiritual teaching when he brought up the three spirit values. We don’t love God in order to attain something higher or better than God. We don’t seek Truth or Beauty or Goodness in order to get some other value out of them. Each is an intrinsic value which satisfies in and of itself. Spirit values really are value.
So Truth is value; Beauty is value; Goodness is value.
Things, ideas, relations, have value in so far as they are useful in attaining other things, ideas, relations. Or in so far as they partake of God or of God’s Truth, Beauty, and/or Goodness.
-Reader
Reader wrote: We don’t seek Truth or Beauty or Goodness in order to get some other value out of them.
56:10.15 Even truth, beauty, and goodness — man’s intellectual approach to the universe of mind, matter, and spirit — must be combined into one unified concept of a divine and supreme ideal. As mortal personality unifies the human experience with matter, mind, and spirit, so does this divine and supreme ideal become power-unified in Supremacy and then personalized as a God of fatherly love.100:3.4 Meaning is something which experience adds to value; it is the appreciative consciousness of values.
Bonita, yes, it is my hope that the meanings I derive from all my service-experience, contemplated and combined in the light of my best grasp of spirit values, will not fail to aid me in co-creating (with divine spirit) an increasingly real (unified and creative) approach to the God of universes (represented to me in this life as Universal Father, my supreme ideal).
Readers should understand that the ‘supreme ideal’ which the author writes about in your quote refers to nothing less than each person’s current God-concept.
God is of course not a mere concept, nor is God’s indwelling spirit, but I think all finite personalities here on Urantia and in the current universe age are tasked with the use of meanings as aids in the real-ization of the glory of this divine presence in and to their fellow-finites. That is what I think the author means by the reference to the ideal becoming ‘power-unified in Supremacy’ – a large topic.
Thanks for writing. Do go on, if you’d like.
-Reader
Reader wrote: Urantia and in the current universe age are tasked with the use of meanings as aids in the real-ization of the glory of this divine presence in and to their fellow-finites.
Bonita writes:
What do you mean by “use of meanings as aids”? How do you separate meaning from the value? Aids to what?
I meant to imply that there’s more to it, that meanings are ancillary to the total experience. They are crucial in that they are useful – they make sense of value-experience for us, connecting dots, deepening the ramifications. If I can grasp some particular harmony or beauty of soul-growth under a meaningful expression, for example, I might be able to share it out.
Similarly on the mansion worlds we will enjoy the rush of new meanings as well as the love, mercy, ministry of those higher in attainment who are appointed to share divine truth, beauty, and goodness with every new ascender.
Outside of love, mercy, and ministry, I’m not sure any hint of divine values can be shared between two minds without the aid of meaning. As pure experience our brush with value is very personal, goodness, beauty, truth are not means to an end, they are simply the ‘lures’ of God-reality, each awakens love for more of God, but is valuable in and of itself. Well that’s my current understanding.
Meaning is what we ourselves make of this brush with reality (besides co-creation of soul).
But the divine value itself is not given on the plane of utility – it is not “good for something” it is good in itself, not a means but an end.
Meanings augment the adventure in and with spirit values, they enhance the experience of divine Truth, Beauty, and Goodness, not only personally and individually but because they allow for the possibility of common experience (experience which without them is isolated).
This is only a snapshot of my current understanding. Good questions.
-Reader
Reader wrote: Outside of love, mercy, and ministry, I’m not sure any hint of divine values can be shared between two minds without the aid of meaning.
Bonita writes:
I’m pretty sure the only thing we all share is the indwelling Spirit, the source of value, and the Adjusters are all identical in nature. I think it’s the meanings and interpretations of value that are all different.
I agree, although this sense of the word ‘share’ is quite different than the sense I intended.
But yes, this universal ‘share’ in God’s quiet indwelling Spirit which the whole world enjoys since Pentecost is the key concept of our gospel, I think. It is the key to recognizing the real oneness of all humanity without eliminating the precious uniqueness of their personalities (since Father’s Spirit itself takes the lead in refusing to over-rule personality prerogatives). It is the key to attaining that purity of mind which overcomes the obstacle of unlovliness by ‘seeing’ the best in everyone without conditions which would render a child of God less than whole. It is the key to loving the whole Sonship as One.
Reader wrote: It is the key to loving the whole Sonship as One.
